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The Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut shall commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht – The Night of Broken Glass – at 4 p.m., Sunday, November 10, 2013, at Connecticut College in Evans Hall at the Cummings Art Center, New London, CT.

Jerry Fischer, Director of the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut and Gaby Schlesinger, Chair of the Kristallnacht Committee, expressed the importance of educating every new generation about the crimes and terror perpetrated against the Jewish communities of Germany and Austria during the pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938.

It is imperative that we honor those who suffered and died, and that we never forget that dark night in which the leadership of Nazi Germany ordered the violent radicalization of its anti-Jewish policy. The pogrom was planned by the Nazi leadership, implemented by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, and managed by Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering and SS Commander Reinhard Heydrich. Police and firefighters were ordered to stand aside as mobs of Germans murdered 91 Jews, burned and destroyed more than 1,400 synagogues, vandalized, pillaged and destroyed over 7,500 Jewish businesses, and arrested 30,000 Jews who were sent to concentration camps. In the weeks that followed the Jewish victims were ordered to pay $400 million for damages they suffered, and Goering ordered the confiscation of all insurance compensations paid them.